In an Parallel World where Earth's inhabitants are anthropomorphized animals on the dogface model, Drake Mallard (Cummings) is secretly the Superhero Darkwing Duck, an egotistic blowhard – "I am the terror that flaps in the night" – desperate for fame and media attention. Operating in the City of St Canard, he battles street criminals until encountering Taras Bulba (Curry), a master Villain who has stolen the Waddlemeyer ramrod (see Weapons), a device capable of generating Antigravity. Mallard now meets Launchpad McQuack (McGovern), a comically inept aeroplane pilot from the nearby city of Duckberg, who is his biggest fan and yearns to be his crime-fighting partner. The duo expands with the addition of the pixilated young Gosalyn Waddlemeyer (Cavanaugh), whose grandfather invented the ramrod and was then murdered by Bulba's thugs in a botched effort to obtain the device's arming sequence. Bulba eventually obtains the code from Darkwing Duck, but after a battle atop a skyscraper, the ramrod explodes, apparently killing both the hero and the villain. But a very loose story arc soon takes shape, with Drake showing up in his civilian alter ego to adopt Gosalyn from an orphanage along with McQuack, now his friend and full-time assistant.

The series was a fine Parody of superheroes, with the title character combining traits from Batman, the Shadow, the Green Hornet and Doc Savage among others. Regular foes were generally parodies of well-known enemies of Batman or Spider-Man. Examples include Quakerjack, an insane toy-maker dressed as a medieval jester who uses various diabolical weapons based on toys to commit crimes; Bushroot, a Mad Scientist who became a duck-plant hybrid after experimenting upon himself and has the ability to control plant life in much the same manner as TheSwamp Thing; and Megavolt (at one point to be called Dim Bulb), a spoof of Spider-Man's enemy Electro. An occasional ally and rival superhero is Gizmo Duck (Camp), who wears a Powered Armour suit similar to the Marvel Comics hero {IRON MAN}. Other instalments satirize James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and the contemporary Television series Twin Peaks (1990-1991).

Darkwing Duck may well be the best superhero Satire to date in either live action or animated formats, benefiting from scripts enjoyable by children while catering for adults. It was a spinoff from DuckTales (1987-1990) an animated series based on the Disney Comics by Carl Barks (1901-2000) [for Barks and Disney see TheEncyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], whose creation of Duckberg and sophistication of the dogface template (see J J Grandville) deeply shaped the mise en scene of Darkwing Duck. Many sf themes are namechecked but rarely scrutinized beyond the level of the joke told. The series as a whole was far darker than usual for Disney, and constantly flirted with copyright transgressions against the trademarks of competing corporate entities; its relatively limited distribution after 1992 may seem unsurprising. Tie merchandise includes several Videogames and comics. [GSt/JC/DRL]

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